Wrong Side of the Wall

Book excerpt: Set against the grime-and-glitter backdrop of mid-20th century Los Angeles, this is the true story of a talented young athlete in the days before special ability in sports was a ticket to riches. Faced with a choice of sure success in the revered but grueling world of major league baseball or the easy money, fast times, and glamour of organized crime, Ralph "Blackie" Schwamb tried to have it all. But the pull of the underworld was inevitably too strong, and Blackie, a rising star pitcher for the St. Louis Browns at 22, was behind bars for a brutal murder at 23. Like a fast-paced novel, this book races breathlessly through Depression-era and World War II L.A. and into the postwar economic boom, plunging into a world of gangsters, nightclubs, girls, guns, gambling, and booze, from Mexico to Canada--and baseball, mostly behind prison walls.--From publisher description.